![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4ee5e70538727bfc524642b5bab66c1b.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWith her swag rolled out and her campfire lit, Sophia Croker is in her happy place.<\/p>\n
She’s in the middle of nowhere, but right beside the thing that matters most: her bees.<\/p>\n
“Nothing about my lifestyle is normal,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Who else gets to say they sleep in their swag under the stars every night and they don’t know where their next destination is going to be?”<\/p>\n
Loading…<\/p>\n
Sophia loves her nomadic life as a commercial beekeeper, trucking hundreds of hives around rural New South Wales and Victoria chasing honey flows and pollinating crops.<\/p>\n
But behind the passion and devotion is a hidden struggle that’s forcing Australia’s beekeepers to call it quits.<\/p>\n
“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t sat and gone, ‘Is this worth it?'”<\/p>\n
A deadly bee parasite, competition with imported honey, and rising fuel costs are devastating the industry.<\/p>\n
“The price we get for our honey doesn’t cover the cost of production at the moment.”<\/p>\n
But as many businesses leave the industry, this 23-year-old is doubling down.<\/p>\n
She’s determined not only to stay but to make sure more people know the truth behind the honey in their kitchen cupboards.<\/p>\n
Becoming ‘The Bee Drover’<\/p>\n
Even though beekeeping has been in her family for over a century, Sophia didn’t dream of following in their footsteps.<\/p>\n
But her life changed dramatically when she was an 18-year-old university student, and the offer came up to buy 120 hives from a beekeeper leaving the industry.<\/p>\n
It was a $40,000 investment.<\/p>\n
“All of a sudden I was starting a company and at the bank taking out my first ever loan.”<\/p>\n
And so began the fourth generation of beekeepers in the family, which started with Sophia’s great-grandmother carting hives through the citrus orchards of Beelbangera on her push bike in the 1920s.<\/p>\n
In five years, Sophia has doubled her hives and also helps manage her dad’s, meaning they’re moving up to 2,000 hives at a time.<\/p>\n
They’re constantly on the move, either chasing honey flows, finding areas where plants are in bloom and producing nectar, or being contracted on farms to pollinate crops.<\/p>\n
“We get to see so much land that people will ever see in their lifetimes; it’s so special.”<\/p>\n
Sophia now documents her work and lifestyle on social media as “The Bee Drover”, where she also hopes to bring greater awareness to the challenges facing the industry.<\/p>\n
The buzzkill\u00a0<\/p>\n
The deadly varroa mite parasite is devastating beekeeping businesses, prompting warnings of a potential food crisis, as at least 60 per cent of hives are wiped out.<\/p>\n
The pest arrived in Australia in 2022 and has drastically changed beekeeping practices and costs.<\/p>\n
“I knew the moment I found my first mite, it was going to change the way I bee keep forever.”<\/p>\n
And it has.<\/p>\n
“Every beekeeping technique, just throw it out the window.”<\/p>\n
Because of the intensive treatments required to manage varroa mite, Sophia says her workload has increased fivefold.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sophia says rising fuel costs and the cost of treating hives for varroa mite are making beekeepers question whether the lifestyle is worth it. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
The cost of treatments, along with higher fuel prices and more imported honey on Australian shelves, means running a business is almost not viable.<\/p>\n
“I was crunching numbers at the end of the season and I was like, ‘How do I still not have enough money to live, to eat food?'”<\/p>\n
Sophia says honey production alone would not keep her business alive, so pollinating crops like almonds had become an important source of income.<\/p>\n
“This is a critical industry.<\/p>\n
“One in every three mouthfuls of food that we consume is because of pollinators.<\/p>\n
“We do need beekeepers, that’s the reality.”<\/p>\n
‘Beekeeping gets in your blood’<\/p>\n
And that reality is what drives The Bee Drover.<\/p>\n
Sophia admits she’s been under “unbelievably high stress”.<\/p>\n
“But my dad says beekeeping gets in your blood, and I think that’s kind of true.<\/p>\n
“My family has been so passionate about it for over a century, the idea of walking away breaks my heart a bit.”Loading<\/p>\n
She hopes her storytelling series can help change consumer behaviour.<\/p>\n
“We need some more things in place to safeguard our industry from fake and adulterated honey.<\/p>\n
“How we do that is out of my hands; I’m just a beekeeper.<\/p>\n
“I just love telling our story because I think it’s such a cool story to tell.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With her swag rolled out and her campfire lit, Sophia Croker is in her happy place. She’s in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,398183,398180,398188,398184,398185,44,398182,398186,398187,3953,44318,81780,398181],"class_list":["post-824353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bee-drover","tag-bee-keeping","tag-commercial-bee-keeping","tag-croker-bees","tag-croker-honey","tag-news","tag-sophia-croker","tag-sophia-croker-bees","tag-sophia-croker-honey","tag-triple-j","tag-triple-j-hack","tag-varroa-mite","tag-varroa-mite-nsw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}